The international development community has used the World Bank's Statistical Capacity Index since its inception in 2004. The Sustainable Development Goals create new challenges for national statistical systems to produce high-quality and internationally comparable data. This paper reviews...

A country's statistical capacity takes an indispensable part in its development. We offer a comprehensive comparison between the World Bank's Statistical Performance Indicators and Index (SPI) and its predecessor, the Statistical Capacity Index (SCI) regarding different conceptual and empirical...

Country statistical capacity is increasingly recognized as crucial for development, but no academic study exists that reviews the available assessment tools. We offer the first review study that fills this gap, paying particular attention to data and practical measurement challenges. We compare...

Administrative data are considered the "gold standard" when measuring program participation, but little evidence exists on the potential problems with administrative records or their implications for econometric estimates. We explore issues with administrative data using the FoodAPS, a unique...

We analyze and assess new evidence on employment dynamics from a new data source the National Establishment Time Series (NETS). The NETS offers advantages over existing data sources for studying employment dynamics, including tracking business establishment relocations that can contribute to job...

The many facets of retirement have been studied widely by economists. However, the effect of retirement on marriage stability has been ignored in the literature. Retirement represents a dramatic change in individual time allocation that may affect marriage stability. In particular, individuals...

Though theoretically appealing and very popular amongst labour economists, the interpretation of the unexplained part of the Oaxaca (1973) decomposition as discrimination rather than an omitted variable problem in cross-section data has often been criticised. In this note it is shown that this...

This paper presents the first analysis of the life course outcomes through late midlife (around age 55) for the participants of the iconic Perry Preschool Project, an experimental high-quality preschool program for disadvantaged African-American children in the 1960s. We discuss the design of...

This study examines high school effects on the labor market success of young adults, above and beyond individual and family characteristics. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples: the National Longitudinal Study and the High School and Beyond study and the 5th and...